The Resurected Pig. Chapter 10

THE RESURRECTED PIG

The Ukrainian villagers tend to wake up very early. At six in the morning almost all the adult population is already on their feet. Even if you have a terrible hangover after a late night party, you have to get up and work. If you get sick, you will not stay in bed because the cattle need caring. Come hell or high water, it is practically impossible to get away from work even if you barely stand on your feet from the illness that has taken away all your strength, you need to get up and take care of your household. There is no one to rely on: everyone has their own worries.

Family life has brought Cardan an additional burden on his body. He gets up at five in the morning, half dead - half alive from a murderous effect of alcohol, takes a scythe and goes to a field. After five minute's hard work under a scorching sun he takes shelter in shade, drinks some water from a three-liter glass jar and continues mowing further.

After a few days the hay dries up – he needs to have it delivered to his household. He gets it taken home by tractor and begins to put it in the barn. His wife passes her husband weighty pitchforks of hay to the attic of the barn, Cardan distributes it evenly across the corners, trying to lay up as much of the hay as possible in one place. The heat in the attic is so unbearable in the summer that he is totally soaked wet with perspiration from head to toe.
59

The sweat flows down the forehead into the eyes, burns like fire, eats in,  drips from the nose as if from a spring icicle heated by the sun.

Cardan quickly grabs the shirt that he has put off, wipes his face and continues to lay up and pound the hay. Three minutes later his eyes are flushed with sweat again. He picks up the shirt but it is already as wet as a mop rag. He wrings it out from the moisture, wipes his face and dashes "into the battle" again. The hay sticks to the wet body, small particles penetrate into intimate places; it prickles, it is unpleasant, awful, but the work has to be done, otherwise there will be no fodder for the cattle in the winter.

At last the work is over, he has a few drinks of vodka, gets rid of his physical and moral tension and goes to bed. Next morning he gets a new assignment from his wife. Cardan sees rest only in his dreams.

Winter has come and brought severe frosts - firewood needs delivering. Cardan finds people for help; he is unable to cope up with it by himself - the logs are too heavy. They go to the forest by tractor. A good dry tree stands there. It is tall and thick; one can hardly put his arms around it. They fell it, saw it into parts, grab one log together – no, it is too heavy to lift. Once more they saw each log into two parts and then put them on a pile.

Now they can have a drink of vodka. The fire is cracking; a piece of pork lard is being fried on a stick. Alcohol warms their insides, their heads become slightly dizzy and a pleasant conversation makes the hard work easier.
"OK, one round of drinks down, one more to go and we're done." Cardan points out vehemently.

The next day he needs to search for transport to deliver the logs from the woods. Cardan finds someone to help him. The guys are eager to get some booze, so they assist him to load the logs onto the trailer and then unload them at delivery.

This is how people live in the village, providing mutual assistance to each other; the gratitude for help is alcohol and a heart-to-heart conversation. A human organism can hardly sustain such strain for a long time; there are many a villager who early join the other world. They cannot transfer their skills to the younger generation because the birth rate in the village is very low. Nurseries are being closed, schools, first aid medical offices are being transferred to the district centers or villages with a larger population. It is necessary for villagers to learn skills of managing their households for themselves for the lack of instructors, learning the trade by the rule of thumb.

One day at four in the morning there was a knock at the window of Cardan`s house, waking him up earlier than usual.
"Who's there?" he asked, pacing over to the window.
"Open the door. I`m your neighbor. I need to talk to you."
"Oh, gosh, how hard it is to get up so early," thought Cardan and went to open the door, carrying a heavy head with pulsating temples on his shoulders.
"Come on, come inside, don`t let the cold in."
The early guest quickly ran past Cardan into the warm room.
“What the heck has happened?” asked Cardan in a dissatisfied voice, stroking the top of his head.
“The pig is dying, it should be slaughtered before it's too late, so that we can avoid a worse-case scenario. I wondered if you'd care to give me a hand if it's not too much trouble?”
“Of course! I think I can swing it!" Cardan exclaimed, feeling the opportunity to get a drink and get rid of the hangover.

After explaining his wife such an early visit of the neighbor, he heard compelling advice from her, “Go and help them! It chills me to the bone just to imagine how they can work it all out by themselves. If something bad happens to us, who we will turn to? Will you be able to handle it, though?”
“Of course, I'm a grown-up man. It`s not for the first time that I'm going to slaughter a pig. It's as easy as pie. I'll pull it off,” Cardan calmed his wife down with unceasing assurances.

At the neighbor's house the whole family was already on their feet; bowls, cast-iron pots, pans were being prepared ... The housewife was rushing around the house, submerged in the preparation. The neighbor led Cardan inside and invited him to the table.
61

"Let`s have a drink of vodka for bravery," he suggested.
"Fine with me!" Cardan supported him instantly.
The drink really hit the spot. It greatly increased Cardan's confidence. He felt happy, in a tipsy, emotional way.

"Have you ever slaughtered pigs? Will you manage?" Asked the concerned housewife and gazed down at him with an expression of intense expectation.
“I know why you're so anxious. If I were in your shoes, I'd be as worried as you. I assure you that I'll handle it perfectly fine. I have stabbed a lot of them in my lifetime. When I was in the army, I was occasionally sent to a slaughterhouse to do some butcher work. I helped to supply meat to the regiment. I got the hang of it there," he lied.

In fact, he knew the process of slaughtering pigs only theoretically. He decided that the knowledge obtained from the stories of his friends would help him cope with such a trifling thing. To his mind to fail in this matter seemed an unlikely scenario.

“What happened to the pig that you decided to slaughter it so suddenly?”
“It doesn't eat anything. We are afraid that it will perish. We`d better do it now, or it will be too late. And then the invested money and labor will go down the drain. The idea is quite unsettling for us." The thrifty housewife explained.

It was still quite dark outside. Straw was littered all over the place. They arranged an extension cable with a lamp and illuminated the yard - the field for cruel activity was ready.
"Watch me and learn," recommended Cardan and braced for whatever was about to come out of it. "It's not for the faint of heart."
"I could probably remember how to do it if I put my mind to it."
"That would be a useful skill."
"Fair enough!"

Cardan got a self-made knife for slaughtering hogs. The pig was lured out into the yard. The host scratched it behind its ear; it calmed down, grunted but sensing the unskillful actions of the butcher, burst out with a deafening yelp.
"Here goes nothing," Cardan mumbled and threw a knife quickly under its left leg and plunged it up to the very hilt, according to his idea right into the heart.

The curtains on the windows of the house closed immediately; frightened children, watching the bloody process, ran away from the window and buried under the blanket. A few snowflakes melted on the glass from their warm breathing and slid to the frame. The housewife took refuge in the adjacent room and sobbed. She gave so much time for the care of the pig that she got used to it as if to a member of the family. Now her "four-legged friend" was leaving this world. "Well, for what it's worth, this is life, there's nothing to be done.
62

We all will go out there sooner or later," the housewife reassured herself with comforting thoughts.
The butchers, having managed with the pig, went into the house to relieve the stress.
"You were right. I saw your experienced hand,” the happy man praised Cardan. “Your reaction was as quick as lightning! Such a blow! I just caught a glimpse of a flashing blade! One, two,  three - and it was finished!"

Cardan had extremely acute situational awareness. He always reacted quickly when there was a drink ahead of him. He acted on autopilot. Everything seemed to happen by itself. He did not even strain himself; the inner will guided his hands, legs, and the brain itself. He completely trusted his inner guidance that more than once disentangled him out of trouble, more than once rescued him in a difficult moment. He relied on it this time either, and it brought him the desired result again.
 
Butchers relieved the stress by having a few shots.
“Well, let`s have one more drink. Then we`ll go out and do some butcher work. It's cold outside. I think that alcohol will warm us up a bit.”
No sooner had they refilled their glasses, than the frightened housewife burst into the house in horror. Her hands turned up in a gesture of shock.
"The pig's gone! It is nowhere to be found! Someone has stolen it! Call the police!"
"Do you have any idea where it might be?" the man asked Cardan in a tremulous voice.
"Anybody's guess is better than mine," mumbled Cardan.

The great experts of cattle slaughtering ran out into the yard. Nowhere! One of them went around the house, another one dashed into the street, then into the barn. Finally, they found the pig in the garden, lying in a deep snowdrift. The situation was ludicrous. Even to Cardan it came as a shock. He was absolutely dumbfounded. He could not even imagine a worse-case scenario.

"I've heard that it takes some time for an animal to die completely. A body may stay alive for a few minutes after the heart has stopped beating," Cardan justified himself.
The neighbor listened in astonishment to the outlandish explanation. "Oh, you're a big liar!” he thought. “And how well he bragged, "I, I, I… I know, I know, I'll do it!" In a pig's eye he did. He probably did not get it right into the heart." But he said nothing, hardly suppressing his internal discontent. He was well aware of the fact that anger was a futile and exhaustive emotion. Besides, the odds were against him to make any rash remarks and to lash out at Cardan. After all, there was no one else to turn to - all the experienced men in the village had died; and as the saying goes, it's better a small fish, than an empty dish.

It goes without saying that in the village like this, it doesn't take long for one man's secret to become every man's rumor. Soon the story about the resurrected pig and Cardan the butcher became a talk of the town. The villagers had a good laugh. But there is nothing to be done. You cannot win all the time.
63

He would not be a rural butcher if the necessity did not make Cardan develop the skills, necessary for survival. This is the way things are in the Ukrainian village.

"Something just came up and I have to take off," lied Cardan.
The man packed a bag and paid Cardan for his assistance.
"Next time you run into trouble, you know who you may ask for help. I'll come flying to you."
"Yes, I will. Thanks!" said the man and thought that he would probably do that when pigs fly over the moon. He had a little headache because of the incident. The neighbor knew that he would have made things worse for him by coming down hard on Cardan. So, he kept his mouth shut and his face a mask of neutrality. He put his hand to the chest, turned around and whispered into the darkness, so that Cardan could not hear him, "Liar!"
64